Listen: The Essential Podcast, Episode 96: Coronation And Collapse, The Story Of The Bond King With Mary Childs

View Full Transcript

Transcript Provided by Kensho

Nathan Hunt: This is The Essential Podcast from S&P Global. My name is Nathan Hunt. What are we to make of Bill Gross? This is a man who founded PIMCO. He almost single-handedly transformed bond markets from a sleepy backwater of finance into a risky and rewarding, high-stakes market.

This is also the man who was forced out of PIMCO when the personality quirks that made him such an outrageous success eventually made him intolerable to his partners. How do you account for a man whose deeply antisocial nature appears to place him firmly on the spectrum, yet this same man has become one of the most frequent guests on CNBC?

There is no accounting for Bill Gross or at least there wouldn't be without the efforts of today's guest. Mary Childs has been a reporter for Barron's, for Bloomberg News and for the Financial Times. She is also the author of the book, The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All, the definitive biography of this fascinating man.

On a personal note, I'm a little nervous about today's interview since Mary's current gig is co-hosting NPRs immensely popular Planet Money podcast. So interviewing her on a podcast is kind of like challenging Mikaela Shiffrin to an informal ski race. Meaning, I know I'm going to come second, but I just hope not to injure myself in the process. With that, Mary, welcome to the podcast.

Mary Childs: Thank you. I will say we do heavily edited interviews at Planet Money, so you're still on safe ground here.

Nathan Hunt: Excellent. Excellent. So Mary, the portrait of Bill Gross that you draw in your book is -- it's Shakespearean in scope. When I was reading the book, I kept thinking of the tragedy of King Lear, a man whose flaws pulled him down as he got older. I have to ask, does Bill Gross in person equal Bill Gross on the page? Does he carry that tragic hero narrative weight?

Mary Childs: I think so. I mean one thing that I was really focused on, especially at the outset of writing this book, was making sure I got the weighting correctly, the kind of -- this is -- Bill is full of paradoxes, as you note. And he's warm and accessible. He's cold and withholding. He's just like all of these things wrapped up in one. And so making sure that like all of that got through was one of the immense challenges of the book.

I think he is, in the end, fairly represented, I think, throughout the book. Like you start out with him being kind of like this larger-than-life jerk, and then I try to kind of shade that in a bit and like give it a bit more nuance. Like maybe that's how he comes off if you're an underling at PIMCO, but like there are other kind of elements and angles to this.

And so I do think the like most compelling thing about Bill Gross as a protagonist for me is how he does kind of carry all of this around with him, and he will tell you about it. Like sometimes, he will be like, "Oh, my god, what an incredible interview you did." And I'm like, "I was just the person who was there."

Like, "I just wrote down what he said, and he would have said it to anyone else." And of course, it's great to be there and to be the one writing it down, but he does kind of wear a lot of this on his sleeve in a way that I think a lot of these larger-than-life finance legends simply don't. And he's just more -- all the more interesting for it, I think.

Nathan Hunt: So just a side note, I think it's amazing that you are so modest. But I don't think every finance book has a blurb written by Gary Shteyngart, the famous novelist and author. So obviously, there is something very novelistic about the story you're telling and the way you're telling it.

Mary Childs: Thank you. I appreciate that. Gary and I go way back. So to some extent, I had a cheat code. But I do -- I did want that, right? Like I wanted this to be -- I read fiction in my spare time. I read nonfiction, too, but I'm really a fiction gal and being able to convince someone who thinks they don't care about this world, that they should was really a goal. And I have kind of a hobbyhorse about like, "You shouldn't let them get away with not -- with your ignorance." Like, "You need to stay on it." And the way to do that is through stories, I think.

Nathan Hunt: So for our listeners who aren't familiar with Bill Gross, which feels somewhat unlikely since it's an S&P Global podcast, but anyway...

Mary Childs: I wasn't going to say it, yes.

Nathan Hunt: Let's assume that there's a couple of listeners out there who don't know who Bill Gross is. Why should they care? What did he do? Why did he matter?

Mary Childs: Yes. So Bill Gross, basically, as you said, he more or less created the active bond market as we know and love it today. He -- when he started out, bonds were a very untreated, very staid, very static industry. And he brought this, I think, somewhat terrifying dynamism to the market way, way back. And I think -- there's no counterfactual for this, so it's hard to really say, for sure.

And of course, I'm hopelessly biased, given how much research I've done and how many years I spent thinking about Bill Gross. But I do think that like his personality shaped how we operate in the bond market, how countries, companies, everybody funds themselves in debt markets and how those securities get treated in the secondary market and how we treat each other within the market, not just in the whole world. I mean maybe a little bit.

But I think that like he has such fingerprints all over the world of finance, and he was so central for so long that it's -- I mean, I thought that this book just needed to exist because of that. Like -- it wasn't like, "Oh, I'll write this funny story." It was fun but it was more that this book needed to already have existed. So I figured, I should just go do it.

And I think that like understanding how we got here, especially if you're like new to the industry or if you're -- you've just been through your first rising interest rate cycle, and you're like, "Wow, that was rough." Like knowing these things and knowing where we came from really puts everything in a much more constructive context, I think.

Nathan Hunt: Absolutely. So let's talk about Bill Gross, the man. Where does he come from? And how does that sort of lead to him creating PIMCO?

Mary Childs: Yes. So he came from Ohio. He's just a folksy, Midwestern guy, and I think that effect is absolutely still there. He does not seem to -- I don't feel like he's converted even now to the like LA, Southern California -- he lives in Southern California, but not in that world. Oh, I should amend that, actually, because now that he's in Palm Springs and wearing Gucci tracksuits, that's a little bit more nuanced than it was in the past.

But yes. So he had this kind of drive his whole life to be extraordinary, and this manifested in a bunch of different ways. And he kind of had an informal running list in his head of what would work to help him kind of deliver whatever extraordinary results he thought he could. And he tried -- he was on the basketball team in high school, and that wasn't really it.

And he tried a bunch of different, like quasi-entrepreneurial things in college, and those kind of didn't work. He like scalped tickets for basketball games at Duke, and like that -- he was like, "I don't know if I like the odds on this. This is kind of just taking a chance. Like it worked out well for me, but not through any skill."

And then he stumbled upon card counting. And then he realized that he was really good at it. He could use this methodology that he got from Ed Thorpe's book, Beat the Dealer, and apply it in Vegas. He tried it out. It worked. He was elated. He was like, "This is so fun, and I'm good at it. If I just like focus," which is more than anyone can do because he's very good at hyper focusing and applying this kind of careful and methodical strategy, then he can win. And so I think he decided, well, what's the most like gambling? Investing. And the rest is history.

Nathan Hunt: So again, most of our listeners are going to, of course, be aware, but like what is PIMCO? And how do they sort of matter in bond markets?

Mary Childs: How do they matter in bond markets? How does the pope matter to Catholicism? I think that -- so PIMCO was founded as sort of a shell company of an insurance company in 1971. And it was this attempt at active bond management. And I think at first, there was some stocks in the mix, and they just kind of -- that fell away.

So they are trading bonds, which again is radical and revolutionary at the time, and they are just really good at it. They're better. They're more enthusiastic. They're faster to the new products. And they started really establishing a name in what was a very small and like not that exciting market for many, many years. And they basically made it exciting and found ways to add derivatives when no one else was doing that and go international when no one else was doing that and really get into the mortgage market before anyone else was interested in that and like in size.

So all of these things helped to make them this behemoth in the bond market. And it's like kind of wild to look back and realize that like no one else was quite on that same page because we know now, and I think we knew then, but we were just not taking advantage of it. The bond market is wildly, hugely influential, crucial to the functioning of the global economy to countries and governments funding themselves.

Like it's always the case that if you want funding, you have to figure out somebody who's going to lend it to you. And the bond market is where that happens in size. So we love to talk about the stock market, but it's like, I don't know, that always feels like the waiting room to me. The like place where you let the kids play for a little while, while you are back in the back doing the actual deals. Like to some extent, overstates the case, but coming from -- reporting on the bond market for so long, that's just truly what I believe.

And it is bigger, and it really has -- if you want to take the keys of a corporation, buy their debt when they're having trouble. So I think the centrality of PIMCO to the bond market and the centrality of the bond market to the functioning of the world is kind of the case for why this is important to understand and why this story matters.

Nathan Hunt: So with PIMCO, Bill Gross was able to kind of make his own private sandbox in Newport Beach. How important was that relative isolation of PIMCO from the rest of the financial world to the development of it as a company?

Mary Childs: It's such an interesting question. I think it was pretty important in a few ways. So they did use it in their like branding and marketing to some degree, where they're like, "We're not on the train in from Connecticut every day, talking about the same ideas with the same other guys." And I think that is true. I think that, to some degree, did provide for some freedom from group think or whatever.

And then there's this other sort of smaller effect where when you are in Newport Beach, there's just not another big employer that will -- like you can't really get another job. So if you've -- but you can, but like it's not -- there's not another PIMCO sitting there. So if you want -- if you've up and relocated your whole family and you live there now and they're like, "Oh, my god, our house is so beautiful. This is wonderful." And you're having a miserable time at PIMCO and you want a different job, like what are you going to do?

Are you going to relocate everybody back? Like you're going to drive 2 hours to LA? Like there's just this trapped-ness that I think is actually quite effective, given how insular and kind of crucible-esque PIMCO can be as a corporate culture. And I think that kind of self-reinforcing mechanism was helpful to them.

Nathan Hunt: Your book is a story of a rise and a fall, right, of this huge figure. What was Bill able to accomplish in the bond market? And how big was his success at the height of it, right? So leaving aside the fall, let's talk about the rise. How big? How good?

Mary Childs: Well, it's nice because there was actually a study that came out that looked at his performance. Because everyone's always like, "I think he was just lucky. He just benefited from falling interest rates over however many years of his career, decades and decades." And like that's true, that he did benefit from a falling interest rate environment for the duration basically of his career. It's also true that so did everyone else. So I always find it -- like just intellectually, there's something missing in that argument.

But like sure, okay, let's say that there was going to be someone and that he's fungible, that it could have been anybody, I don't think that's true. I think there are a lot of kind of anecdotal reasons as to why he was better and why he was able to do what he did, in part that size, in part that's the way he conducted himself in the industry and the kind of aggression that he was willing to demonstrate and the comfort with gray area he was very willing to do, that a lot of other people just start backing away slowly.

I was very heartened by the study that came out right -- I think it came out -- the first draft, maybe it was 2019, something like that by a former PIMCO guy and a quant and they just looked at, okay, did Bill Gross actually do well over his career? Like actually? And they found that there were these robust, replicable, basically, factors that he took advantage of.

And that like makes sense to me. Those were the things that he always talked about as "structural alpha." And they were just his approaches to like scraping a little bit extra basis point out of the market here and there and there, like literally all the time over decades. And that helps you if you make a big dumb call on treasuries, which happens to all of us, you still have this kind of cushion to fall back on.

So I think having that kind of -- it's a bit of a barbell approach, really. I don't think he would call it that because I think he filled in the in-between, but having that kind of backstop in that, those guardrails of like, "I can't totally blow this up because I'm still scraping those extra basis points out," I think that really -- to me, that's compelling. And I think that's what the authors of the study found as well.

Nathan Hunt: Well, absolutely. But the other thing always with Bill Gross is he became the model for how you actively invested in bond markets. So in some ways, one would expect that maybe his results aren't going to look so much better over time because everyone is going to start imitating him, which is exactly what they did.

Mary Childs: Yes. And luckily, he was bigger than everyone for most of that time. As they caught up, he was already still so far ahead. And that in the bond market does allow you to act in a certain way. It does allow you to get first look on new issues, which for a long time -- especially towards the end of his career, where like the only place to make money in the bond market were like you buy a new issue bond and it pops in secondary right away.

And like congratulations, you made a little bit of extra money and like you can sleep at night. And that, I think -- being able -- that's just an example of being able to be -- to take advantage of size, which does help in the bond market. Where I think in equities, it's a little bit messier to be too large.

But then to the rest of your question, I think the financial crisis was really when he was on top of the world, right, when he traded correctly and all of PIMCO traded basically correctly. And like correct but well informedly. Like they had a good kind of risk management approach to trading the crisis that like -- no shade to John Paulson, but that trade very barely worked.

And like there's just a world in which like the timing was off in there and we haven't heard of John Paulson, like that's very reasonable. But PIMCO had this very kind of measured, "Okay, we're going to stay out of the bad stuff when it goes bad. And then incrementally work our way in as it's recovering. And also, buy whatever the government is about to buy." And that worked out really, really, really well for them.

Nathan Hunt: Mary, I've known some immensely successful people in my life, maybe not Bill Gross successful, but at least in the same kind of ZIP code. So some of them ended up having very similar reversals over time. To what extent do you think that the successes of a man like Bill Gross create the conditions for their eventual fall?

Mary Childs: I mean you can -- it's so powerful. You have a really hard time once you reach this level of success finding people who will tell you no and knowing if you could trust the people that can tell you no. Like I think one of the tragedies of this book is you can see each of the old-school PIMCO people fall away.

And they make enough money, they make their number, they retire or whatever, Bill sours on them for whatever reason. And by the end, there's -- as it was put to me many times, there's no adult in the room. There's nobody to tell him -- nobody that he trusts to tell him, "Hey, man." Like, "You're kind of off the grid here." Like, "We need to rein it in."

And also, once you've reached that level of success, you're like, "What do they know? Like I'm the one who did this. I have the good ideas. Why wouldn't I just replicate what I've been doing, I'm the one with the good instincts?" And I think that is really powerful. Now PIMCO did a good job, I think, over many decades of being like cutting edge in innovation. Like new products, new technologies, they're like into it in a way that I find like somewhat -- I'm a little jealous.

I'm like -- I see TikTok, and I'm like, "I'm going to bed. I can't." So like, "How can I be more like that?" But at the same time, I think that like there was this sense that Bill wasn't going to hear everybody out necessarily. He wants the best idea, but he's going to trust himself at the end of the day.

And I think it's just really powerful and hard to escape and like I don't know that any -- there are very few people that I think have gotten to that level and been able to retain enough humility and enough, I don't know, open-mindedness to hear other people. Like you look across Wall Street and certainly, the titans of industry there are all actively struggling with it.

Nathan Hunt: So let's say me, I'm working for Bill Gross during his time at PIMCO.

Mary Childs: God bless.

Nathan Hunt: I'm a junior guy. I just took a job out in Newport. And I am -- I'm sitting in the sort of vast, open area of cubicles. What are my interactions with him like? How receptive is he to my ideas?

Mary Childs: He is receptive. I would try to avoid making eye contact because he doesn't like that. I would not talk. Silence on the trading floor. You would already have kind of taken that social cue, hopefully, on your first day because no one else is talking. He would like to kind of scoop up ideas.

And that is a way like people point to Mark Kiesel in corporate credit as a success story of someone who worked his way up. Like by dropping good ideas off at Bill Gross' desk and saying like -- being kind of proactive with their like portfolio suggestions and the like model portfolios and the information ratios. There are different like ways in which that they submitted ideas and Bill wants to hear them, wanted to hear those ideas.

So there was a way to like prove yourself in that arena. Like that's what he respects. Like that language is the language that he speaks, and everything else, he's kind of like, "Oh, are you making noise?" So if you stay focused on that as a junior credit analyst or whatever, that's definitely, I think, the path to success. Now outside of Bill, I think politicking is necessary.

Nathan Hunt: Okay. So assume I am really eager and I really want to blow my bosses away in this job, and I show up at 6:30 in the morning.

Mary Childs: Well, that's too late. First of all, you're going to have to make it 3.

Nathan Hunt: I'm going to have to make it 3 in the morning. Okay. Is Bill there at...

Mary Childs: That's when Mohamed gets in.

Nathan Hunt: Oh, yes. Okay.

Mary Childs: Yes.

Nathan Hunt: So let's talk about Mohamed, right? Since I've been using some literary terms to discuss your book quite on purpose because I -- reads like a novel. So let's introduce the character of nemesis, right? Talk to me about Mohamed El-Erian. How does he enter the world of Bill Gross? And what role does he play in his story?

Mary Childs: So Mohamed was at PIMCO on the emerging markets desk and made a good name for himself there with this very good Argentina trade and I think also a convergence trade, currency conversions and left to go manage Harvard endowment, which was a very tough job for -- like it's not a job that anyone wanted. But a lot of scrutiny, a lot of everyone getting mad at you, a lot of hard work, I guess.

So he goes to do that for a very short period of time. And then PIMCO's kind of like, "Well, we need a successor to Bill Gross." Like, "We need somebody who can come in -- we need a" -- they really need to do a successor to Bill Thompson, who was kind of getting near the end of his time with PIMCO and was like, "I got to get out of here."

So they're like, "Mohamed," like, "what do you think?" And he ends up coming over, and he's got this kind of -- he's such a different personality to Bill Gross. He's very macro. He's very diplomatic. He's very polite. And Bill is like aggressively direct and intense and has basically no time for pleasantries, so it's just like they could hardly be more different. And I think from there, the relationship just starts falling apart.

So they didn't start out as nemesis. They started out really trying to be allies and work together and have this like beautiful relationship that yielded a wonderful and happy firm, and it just really did not go that way at all. I think Mohamed was less -- just less -- maybe less interested, frankly, on the granular of like portfolio construction than Bill was, and that pissed Bill off. And Bill's erratic and -- erratic is an intentionally chosen word there. It's like very much the word that came out a lot about those behavior.

But Bill would kind of change his mind on something or he would get mad abruptly about something, and I think Mohamed was just like, "I can't deal with this anymore. Like this is untenable." And so between the 2 of them, they just -- they tried to hire a counselor to like marriage counsel themselves and that didn't go. And Mohamed just by the beginning of -- at the end of 2013, really, he was like, "I'm out of here. I'm done."

Nathan Hunt: So to speak delicately, Mohamed appears to be very careful of his reputation. What role did his lawyers play in your writing process?

Mary Childs: I love how carefully this question is phrased. So I was working on the book for so long, like 100 years. It was really 7, but it felt like 100. It felt like, to me, every 10 minutes, I'd be like, "Hi, it's me again. You want to -- can I talk to" -- and sorry for the sound that, that made in everyone's ear. But that is truly -- like I felt like I was like this little Chihuahua, like running around after everyone being like, "Hello." And so I gave everyone ample opportunity to speak with me for this book, including but not limited to Mohamed.

And Mohamed would not talk to me for the duration of the 7 years that I was working on it. And then at the bajillionth hour, I got a letter from -- or an e-mail from a representative being like, "Let's talk. Here's a letter from his lawyer with" -- oh, gosh, I forgot how many points it was. A lot of points. Somehow, he had obtained a copy of my manuscript, which is not a thing that anyone -- like I can assure you, the process is zipped up. Like they don't leak anything from these publishing houses.

And so I get this e-mail and I'm like, "How did you get a copy of my" -- and I'm thinking, I'm like, "How did -- who did the -- who leaked?" And then I'm like, "This is what happened to Bill Gross." I think this is exactly -- like Bill Gross started to kind of lose it in 2014 because there were all these like leaks to the media. And I was like, "Okay, I'm not even going to wonder about this anymore. I'm going to just put it in a box and bury the box in the ocean."

But anyway, the letter from the lawyer ended up being incredibly helpful. Like I would never in my life as an journalist, like it's unethical to share a manuscript, but getting these notes beforehand, I mean, I far would prefer that then after and -- after publication. And so it -- I incorporated all of his notes that we're reasonable and actionable. And I think the text is much mature for it.

Nathan Hunt: I thought it added just this wonderful bit of spice to all of the chapters that had Mohamed in it because you would describe an interaction based on the observations of the people in the room and then end it with a note that Mohamed's lawyer has informed you that, that does not reflect his memory of the events at all, right? And it was just -- it was perfect. It was always this like, "Well, I wonder what Mohamed's lawyer feels about this."

Mary Childs: It's like you kind of wish you had Mohamed's lawyer, like commenting on your everyday life?

Nathan Hunt: Yes. Kind of, yes.

Mary Childs: They'll go with you to a bakery. They're like, "This does not open early enough." That would be nice. It felt that way to me, too. It was nice to get -- like some of them, the notes were so small that I was like, "I did a really good job reporting." Not to toot my own horn here, but like it was really reassuring in a lot of senses that like I actually nailed this.

And of course, there were some that he like took issue with, as is his right, and that's all in there. But I do think like this is something that I think a lot about, just like with journalism writ large is that like showing our process and showing how we know what we know to whatever extent we can, which is like, obviously, very difficult sometimes is more info -- like more information is better. So as much as I can tell you, I will tell you, and you can draw your own conclusions from what I've handed you.

Nathan Hunt: Mary, when I go to the opera...

Mary Childs: A strong start to a question.

Nathan Hunt: I usually find myself hoping at the intermission for a happy ending, even though I know in my heart, it's all going to end badly but beautifully and musically. I can't help but think, "No, it's just a misunderstanding. You should just talk to each other." I felt the same way when I was reading your book. I kept cheering for Bill Gross, despite his character flaws, to gracefully develop his successors and ride peacefully off into the sunset.

Mary Childs: I know.

Nathan Hunt: Spoiler alert, that doesn't happen. What did happen? What was the end game here?

Mary Childs: Yes. So it is super tragic because there are so many moments -- not to like make myself out to be Shakespeare, but there are -- the same like 3-second delay in Romeo and Juliet is like kind of present. Like there's a moment where Bill is like putting forward a succession plan and exit strategy for himself, and they're like, "Bro, if you had said this 2 weeks earlier, we might have believed you."

And like there's just -- they're so not on the same page for basically the duration of 2014. And everything Bill Gross does functionally serves to alienate the exec committee and the other management at PIMCO further. And that's from going on stage at Morningstar, putting on sunglasses, comparing himself to Justin Bieber and giving this like totally, I don't know, zany speech that they were completely -- like PIMCO's PR was just like floor -- jaw on the floor. Like what is happening here?

And then -- but then there were really like kind of poignant, heartbreaking moments internally where he's like clearly still grappling with the wound of Mohamed El-Erian's departure, and he's just like not able to move on. And then that starts to kind of -- that like starts the divide.

And then from there, it's like, "Okay, Bill, what's the real plan? How are you going to retire?" And he's like, "Oh, I'm not going to." And then the next week, he's like, "Okay, let's make a plan." And then, "I'm not going to." And just that moving of the goalposts, as it was put to me, it was just people got tired and ran out of goodwill.

Nathan Hunt: There's sort of a denouement to the story. It's more personal about Bill Gross, the family man. There's clearly a lot of pain there. How do you place that within the context of the story you're telling of his career and how it played out?

Mary Childs: It was one of those things where like I kind of felt the same way as it was happening. I was like, "I don't want this. This is not" -- like when I started the book, he was a huge legend that everyone respected. Maybe they hated him, but they respected him.

And by the end of the -- my time writing the book, he had been like sentenced to jail for harassing his -- for like bothering his neighbors so much and just so many different things where I was like, "I have no control over any of these things," but it is like, "I have to include them or it's just journalistic malpractice." And it just kept getting more tragic.

Now I do think he has turned some things around. Like he's trading well in the market, he's putting out these tweets about his fun times with his wife Amy and wearing a Gucci tracksuit. And you can't be a tragic figure if you're wearing a Gucci tracksuit, I think we can all agree on that.

So I just -- I do like -- maybe I'll update the book one day, but I think like it was kind of hard to watch. And knowing -- like coming to understand who he is over so many years and to whatever degree it's possible, of course, and like what makes him tick and what he values and what he thinks is important, it was just really sad to have to see so many of those things taken away from him or that he just blew up on his own out of spite or anger or hurt or whatever.

And like -- I don't know. He made a comment to me in 2017, that was like, "Maybe it couldn't have gone another way." Like, "Maybe that was the only outcome that was possible." And like that breaks your heart, too, but there's something comforting in that a little bit, where it's like it was going to have to happen. Yes, I'm heartened that he's kind of taken his life by the horns and made a whole new thing because it was a sadder ending than I had expected.

Nathan Hunt: So let's not leave it there. If I can impose on you for just one more thing, can you explain how this rumor started that you wrangled an interview with Bill Gross by dressing up as a Girl Scout?

Mary Childs: Oh, my god, I hate it so much. So that's not true. I just want to say out loud, that's not true. It's a false...

Nathan Hunt: It is -- I confirm, it's not true.

Mary Childs: Thank you. So what happened was I was just a beat reporter. I was like a lowly beat reporter. I mean it was a fun and exciting time to be on the beat, but I -- like I didn't have a lot of power in terms of like I had to cover the story. This was like the most important story on my beat. Obviously, when Bill Gross was quick fired from PIMCO, like I covered PIMCO, what are you going to do but cover this?

And they're like -- my bosses are like, "Go get the story." And I'm like, "Yes, of course." Like send me to LA. I go to LA. I go to Newport Beach. I'm driving around, like trying to meet with literally anyone who would meet with me. And they're like, "Mary, you have to go to Bill Gross' home and knock on his door." I'm like, "This is a terrible but normal thing that people do in journalism."

And that's because it works. Sometimes, people answer the door and they're like, "Oh, I don't want to talk to you, but you're here." And you're like, "I can tell your story. Like let me tell you" -- and they're like, "All right. Fine." It does happen.

And so I'm like, "All right. Yes, yes, yes. Of course. Of course, I'll do that. I can do that." And I'm like, "I don't want to do this," but I had just gotten a little tin of brownies from another store that's in the area. And they -- home-made, delicious brownies. I had, had one, they're very good. And I was like, "Okay, like in Virginia, where I am from, it is common when someone suffers a tragedy to drop off a little tin of food, right? That happens."

So this feels less like morally disgusting to me to drop off some brownies rather than to just like knock on his door and be like, "Hey, Mr. Gross, you want to" -- so I start driving and of course, Bill Gross lives in the gated community because of people like me, like going to his home. And so of course, the guard is like, "No, girl. Like what are you doing here?" And I was like, "Yes, can I drop off these brownies?"

And she's like, "Obviously not. Like what are you thinking?" And I'm like, "Okay. Right. Right. Right. Like billionaire with enemies. I'm sorry. Right. Okay. I'll go home." So I go back to my hotel. And of course, I suppress the memory. And then many, many years later, I hear from a source within PIMCO, they're like, "I heard that you dressed up like a Girl Scout and brought brownies to Bill Gross' house." And I was like, "Where did this uniform come from? Like why -- what did I..."

Nathan Hunt: Honestly, that story is so relatable.

Mary Childs: That's so kind of you to say. Happens to you all the time?

Nathan Hunt: No, I cannot imagine going and knocking on someone's door under those circumstances and the impulse to be like, "I don't -- maybe I'll bring brownies."

Mary Childs: Right. I'll make it normal. It's fine. Yes, yes. Thank you for understanding. It was pretty embarrassing. But that's the game of telephone in Newport Beach, that's what happens.

Nathan Hunt: All right. So the book, once again, is The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All. The author is Mary Childs, co-host of the wonderful NPR podcast, Planet Money. If you're not listening to Planet Money, you're making a serious error in judgment, and I'm not sure we can be friends.

Mary Childs: Thank you. Great endorsement.

Nathan Hunt: Mary, thank you for joining me today.

Mary Childs: Thank you so much for having me. This is really fun.

Nathan Hunt: The Essential Podcast is produced by Patrick Moroney. At S&P Global, we accelerate progress in the world by providing intelligence that is essential for companies, governments and individuals to make decisions with conviction. From the majestic heights of 55 Water Street in Manhattan, I am Nathan Hunt, thank you for listening.

Copyright © 2024 by S&P Global Market Intelligence, a division of S&P Global Inc. All rights reserved.

These materials have been prepared solely for information purposes based upon information generally available to the public and from sources believed to be reliable. No content (including index data, ratings, credit-related analyses and data, research, model, software or other application or output therefrom) or any part thereof (Content) may be modified, reverse engineered, reproduced or distributed in any form by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of S&P Global Market Intelligence or its affiliates (collectively, S&P Global). The Content shall not be used for any unlawful or unauthorized purposes. S&P Global and any third-party providers, (collectively S&P Global Parties) do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, timeliness or availability of the Content. S&P Global Parties are not responsible for any errors or omissions, regardless of the cause, for the results obtained from the use of the Content. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED ON "AS IS" BASIS. S&P GLOBAL PARTIES DISCLAIM ANY AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR USE, FREEDOM FROM BUGS, SOFTWARE ERRORS OR DEFECTS, THAT THE CONTENT'S FUNCTIONING WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR THAT THE CONTENT WILL OPERATE WITH ANY SOFTWARE OR HARDWARE CONFIGURATION. In no event shall S&P Global Parties be liable to any party for any direct, indirect, incidental, exemplary, compensatory, punitive, special or consequential damages, costs, expenses, legal fees, or losses (including, without limitation, lost income or lost profits and opportunity costs or losses caused by negligence) in connection with any use of the Content even if advised of the possibility of such damages. S&P Global Market Intelligence's opinions, quotes and credit-related and other analyses are statements of opinion as of the date they are expressed and not statements of fact or recommendations to purchase, hold, or sell any securities or to make any investment decisions, and do not address the suitability of any security. S&P Global Market Intelligence may provide index data. Direct investment in an index is not possible. Exposure to an asset class represented by an index is available through investable instruments based on that index. S&P Global Market Intelligence assumes no obligation to update the Content following publication in any form or format. The Content should not be relied on and is not a substitute for the skill, judgment and experience of the user, its management, employees, advisors and/or clients when making investment and other business decisions. S&P Global Market Intelligence does not act as a fiduciary or an investment advisor except where registered as such. S&P Global keeps certain activities of its divisions separate from each other in order to preserve the independence and objectivity of their respective activities. As a result, certain divisions of S&P Global may have information that is not available to other S&P Global divisions. S&P Global has established policies and procedures to maintain the confidentiality of certain nonpublic information received in connection with each analytical process. 

S&P Global may receive compensation for its ratings and certain analyses, normally from issuers or underwriters of securities or from obligors. S&P Global reserves the right to disseminate its opinions and analyses. S&P Global's public ratings and analyses are made available on its Web sites, www.standardandpoors.com  (free of charge), and www.ratingsdirect.com  and www.globalcreditportal.com (subscription), and may be distributed through other means, including via S&P Global publications and third-party redistributors. Additional information about our ratings fees is available at www.standardandpoors.com/usratingsfees. 

© 2024 S&P Global Market Intelligence.